Miklós Vámos - The Book of Fathers

“Don’t be so sarcasatic! In Hungarian there’s lots of e’s, so what?”

“Yes, but you have an American name.”

“Unfortunately. You should be proud of your origins.”

“And you don’t think Rabindranath Csillag sounds idiotic?”

“I do. Because of the Csillag part. You should adopt a more sensible name…” though as she saw his eyebrows rise, she corrected herself: “I mean, one that comes well, goes well here… Csillag is quite a tongue-twister for them, they say Chilleg or Kersilleg; do you want that? Why can’t you be Vilmosh Star! William Star! That’s fantastic, don’t you think?”

The “don’t you think” still reminded him of Mama, still whimpering in 4 Márvány Street. With the exhibition of photographs on the chest of drawers. The wedding photo. Papa in uniform. Vilmos Csillag in the regulation photo of the Hungarian Album of Baby Smiles, tummy down on an obscured table, legs swimming in the air. Then the graduation photo. The promotional shot, stamp-size, of the Sputniks cut out of the Radio and TV Times, with the caption: “Fresh talent in the semifinals!”

If there is fresh talent, then there must be stagnant, dried-out, and even rotted talent, he thought; that’s me now.

As for his son’s first name, he immediately rejected “Star” and, in line with his wife’s principle that you should be proud of your ancestry, he also rejected the Indian forenames, after the briefest of considerations. “And anyway, the child’s three-quarters Hungarian and only a quarter Indian.”

Shea admitted this. They agreed that out of practical considerations they would choose a name that existed both in English and in Hungarian and furthermore was not too much of a tongue-twister for an Indian. “What was your father called?” “Balázs Csillag.”

“That’s out, with that zh noise at the end. Grandfather?” “Well… one I don’t know, the other was I think… Mishka. Or Miksha!”

“You’re crazy. You don’t know the name of your grandfather?” “That’s the least of it. I know nothing about my clan.” The word sounded old-fashioned.

Shea laughed. “Your clan ? You mean your ancestors!” “Nor them.”

“You’re crazy! You’re not even curious?” “I’m not crazy. But there’s no one to ask.” He began to explain that only his mother was alive, and it was difficult to talk about such things with her; she would generally change the subject, saying: “Come, come, my dear Willie, why rake over these ancient things!” “But then maybe there’s a skeleton in the cupboard!” “You’ve been watching too many cop shows on TV.” “How do you know? You may be war criminals!” “You’re crazy!” He quivered as he said: “Us being Jews.” “So?” Shea knew precious little of recent European history. Shea continued to bring up the topic from time to time. She simply could not believe that Vilmos Csillag knew so little of his past.

“If you’d known my father you’d understand.” Though even in adulthood he could not understand. How can you bring up a boy in such a cocoon of complete silence? “I know nothing at all. I tried to work things out from the odd remark here and there; the results are meager and confusing. I barely know the names of my father’s parents, let alone those of his parents’ parents. He never spoke of either. He was a broken man after labor service, I know, and then there was the Rajk show trial, and the chronic, ever-worsening heart condition: these are reasons, but no excuse. This is not something he should have neglected. Perhaps if he had not died so soon… I was still wet behind the ears, didn’t ask often enough, didn’t suspect there was so little time left. Or rather, I did suspect, yet this was never on the agenda. As for Mama, well, she is much too scatter-brained to be a credible source.”

The more he went on, the less he understood it himself.

Henry Csillag came into the world at the Flatbush Medical Center in Brooklyn. His life hung in the balance as the umbilical cord twisted around his neck and almost strangled him; his skin turned blue, panicking the medical team.

For a long time Shea would not let her husband near her, claiming that the gynecologist had said it would take time. In the end, she admitted she had lost her sexual desire for him. Vilmos Csillag was thunderstruck: “What do you mean you’ve lost it? Where has it gone?”

“If only I knew! Believe you me, I don’t understand it myself.”

“But then… what’s going to become of us?”

She did not reply. Vilmos Csillag recalled a line from the desperate housing ads in the Budapest papers: “Desperate: any and all solutions considered!”

But his wife did not read Budapest dailies. “What do you want to consider? I move out? You move out?”

Vilmos Csillag realized that things were serious. Shea had stopped caring for the child. From time to time she exhibited the classic symptoms of a heart attack: sudden sweats, her right arm went numb, for several moments she would lose consciousness. They went the rounds of the men in white coats, from gynecologist to psychiatrist: a lot of technical terms were tossed around, like vegetative neurosis, panic attacks, postnatal depression; she received any amount of medication and counseling; she was recommended sleeping cures, group therapy, and courses in yoga. All in vain. Henry-his father insisted on calling him Henrik, the Hungarian form, often adding “the Eighth”-was cared for by his father.

He was sacked from UPS for his notorious tardiness. About this time Shea landed in a New Hampshire sanatorium, only partly paid for by Social Security. Shea’s mother offered to let her son-in-law and grandson live with her, though she was herself on welfare. Her tiny home was near La Guardia Airport, on the Brooklyn-Queens expressway, and the windows rattled day and night as the traffic rumbled by on the eight-lane highway.

For a long time Vilmos Csillag looked for, but failed to find, any work. He ended up at the airport, though not at La Guardia but at Newark, which it took him two hours to reach. His job was to stuff luggage into the bellies of the airplanes and to remove luggage from them. This was a sphere of activity that seemed particularly to attract exiles from Eastern Europe: there were two Poles, a Bulgarian, three Romanians, five Russians, a couple from East Germany, and even an Albanian. No wonder I never learn English properly, thought Vilmos Csillag.

“ Hungary!” the word popped into his head once after a particularly tough shift. Even Hungary has to be better than this.

He called the Embassy, only to be told that he had to apply in person. But Washington, D.C., is a four-hour trip from Brooklyn by car, though not in his twelve-year-old Impala, which two-thirds of the way there began to sound as if armed terrorists were firing from the radiator, and then gave up the ghost. The yellow AAA truck soon rolled up behind him, but after one look under the hood, the AAA man slammed it down again. “You can kiss this rust bucket goodbye.”

After several hours of trying to thumb a lift, he was picked up by a truck carrying horses, but it took him no further than Delaware; here he exercised his arm in vain, until night fell. He walked on to the nearest rest area and spent the night on a bench. The next day he managed to reach the Hungarian Embassy, in a state that did little to inspire confidence. But that was not the only reason they treated him like a leper. The face of the lady clerk reminded him of burned toast. A sourcunt, he decided, the long-dormant word bouncing around his head with a pleasant little buzz.

It turned out that his situation was not hopeless, because after his illegal departure from the Hungarian People’s Republic the criminal proceedings normally pursued in such cases had not been issued and so-as the woman in the blue suit put it-he had “no judgment” on his record. Even if there were, it would be theirs, not mine, he thought.